The Daily Telegraph, 30 June 2007

If Brown is a man of honour, he will give us a referendum

By Ruth Lea

Last Wednesday, our new Prime Minister announced that he would be "strong in purpose, steadfast in will, resolute in action in the service of what matters to the British people''. We were also promised that the "work of change'' would begin. The style of government will change. There will be no more Blairite spin and flashy celebrity. Instead we were embarking on an age of "son of the manse'' integrity and "trying my utmost'' seriousness.

Let us hope that Mr Brown is as good as his word.

For lying at the top, or at the least very near to the top, of his in-tray is the EU's "Reform Treaty'' which is, in all but name, the old constitutional treaty rejected by the French and Dutch electorates two summers ago. With the exception of the British Government, there are no major European politicians claiming that it is otherwise. Angela Merkel, when pushing forward with the new treaty, was refreshingly honest when she said that it was her intention "to use different terminology without changing the substance''.

Hence the word "Constitution'' was dropped and the title of the Foreign Minister was changed. The symbols of "statehood'' such as the flag, the anthem (Beethoven's joyless Ode to Joy from his 9th Symphony) and the motto ("Unity in Diversity'') were consigned to the poubelle. But the substance remained.

When the new treaty is enforced, assuming that it will be, the EU will have all the powers to create a United States of Europe. The road to European integration, started by the 1951 Paris Treaty, which created the European Coal and Steel Community, and the 1957 Rome Treaty, which created the European Economic Community and continued with the Single European Act and the Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice treaties, is all but complete. The EU will have legal personality to sign international treaties in any major policy area. It will have a permanent President and a Foreign Minister. It already has a Central Bank, a Court of Justice and a Parliament and an extraordinarily powerful Commission. It is already responsible for most of the new laws in the member states.

Important though the previous treaties were, however, this new treaty is unique. Once enforced, there will be no more significant powers left solely with the governments of the member states and outside the orbit of the EU's formal institutions. Of course, member states may still pursue their individual foreign and defence policies, for example, but their activities will be increasingly within the confines of developing EU policies in this area.

Our new Prime Minister must understand this, as indeed his predecessor must have understood it. One would like to think that was the reason Tony Blair promised the British people a referendum on the constitution in the 2005 Labour manifesto - though he probably agreed to this to shoot the Opposition's fox. But promise the referendum he did. And that promise is as binding on Gordon Brown as it was on Tony Blair. If Gordon Brown is a man of honour, he must agree to a referendum on the treaty.

Gordon Brown will wriggle - he was in on the negotiations, just on one end of a telephone. He will probably continue to insist that the reform treaty is not the constitution. No one should believe him. And he will claim that Tony Blair's "successes'' in his "red lines'' adequately preserve British interests to invalidate the need for a referendum. But these red lines were pathetically few, amounting to a changed title for the Foreign Minister, an "opt in'' to police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters and a legal opt-out of the Charter of Fundamental Rights which is as leaky as an old bucket. The rest of the treaty has gone through on the nod.

Meanwhile, the rest of the EU is in a great hurry to push the reform treaty through. Portugal, which takes over from Germany tomorrow, will press on with the shortest of inter-governmental conferences to finalise the draft treaty ready for signature - this could happen as early as October.

Insofar as there will be any discussion of the treaty, it is doubtful that our new Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, fresh from dealing with the climate changing properties of methane emissions from cows, is quite the man to stand up for British interests. He has an innocent enthusiasm for the EU and a notable lack of experience in playing hard-ball in an arena where there are many all-too experienced players.

But someone needs to stand up for British interests. All polling shows that most of the British people want a referendum. At the beginning of the week, The Daily Telegraph launched its own online petition calling for a referendum and the site is already teeming with passionately and cogently argued comments.

These indicate just how concerned the British people are about the treaty. You can imagine the gist: "Stop the rot!''; "A referendum is absolutely essential''; "We are railroaded into a situation that most people do not want''; and "Tony Blair had no right to sign up to the treaty''. Readers are wary about what Mr Brown's reaction will be to the "disgraceful defiance of democracy'' and describe the treaty as a "traitorous document''. To a man and woman - pretty much - they insist that a stop be put to "this anti-democratic nonsense''. Meanwhile, all the polling that my campaign group, Global Vision, has done shows an overwhelming majority of people, more than 80 per cent, want a referendum on the treaty.

We ran two polls recently which confirmed this. Our ICM showed that 80 per cent thought there should be a referendum, while only 15 per cent thought not. And our Populus poll showed that 83 per cent said yes to a referendum while only 14 per cent said no. Two things stood out from these independently conducted exercises. One was that the results were remarkably close. And the second was that there were very few "don't knows''.

By agreeing to a referendum, Gordon Brown has a real opportunity to show that he responds to popular sentiment - while distancing himself from the Blair era of spin, showing that he is a man of integrity, and, incidentally, shooting the Opposition's fox yet again. If he does not, his premiership will start with retreat and obfuscation.

If the result of the referendum were in favour of the treaty, then it is business as usual. If the result were not, then, depending how he played it, he could claim victory out of the jaws of defeat and begin to plan for a different, looser relationship for the United Kingdom and the EU, probably based on trade and co-operation, but opting out of political and economic union. Again we know from our polling that this is the sort of relationship the British people would like with the EU.

Such an idea is not deluded fantasy. A special relationship for Britain is being openly discussed on the Continent. Only last Wednesday, Giscard d'Estaing, grand architect of the constitution, said on the radio: "We must find a special status for Great Britain. If the British want to be apart, well, then we must be able to offer them that, and they must be able to accept.''

The door is open. Gordon Brown should walk through it. His first step is a referendum on the treaty.

Ruth Lea is director of Global Vision.